


Painted Charter

by PaxDuane



Series: By Writ and Lips [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: AU of Soft Wars AU, Dogma-centric, Drowning, Gen, Hypothermia, Priest AU, abandoned temples, adding more fantasy to star wars, hints of horrible childhood, kind of, not really but it's hinted about enough i'm tagging it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24951412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxDuane/pseuds/PaxDuane
Summary: Instead of Umbara, the 501st have been rerouted to an old Nautolan colony with General Fisto, thanks to some mix and matching, to look for an important relic. In an abandoned temple, Dogma stumbles across things long forgotten by the galaxy and long buried by his own self preservation.
Relationships: Boba Fett & Dogma (Star Wars), Boba Fett & Jango Fett, CT-5597 | Jesse/CT-6116 | Kix, Dogma (Star Wars) & CT-5597 | Jesse, Dogma (Star Wars) & Jango Fett, Dogma (Star Wars) & Original Character(s), mentioned
Series: By Writ and Lips [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805827
Comments: 18
Kudos: 138





	Painted Charter

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Authorized Developments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24488131) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506). 



Dogma glanced up at the cold stone of the temple above them. Something was strange about this place, long abandoned as it had been. It still felt like it had a heartbeat. General Fisto was ahead of them, scouting ahead with several of the Torrent Company vode.

Something whispered like a dream in his ear, making him jerk around to stare at the weathered walls behind them.

“You okay, Gama’ika?” Jesse asked, putting a hand on his shoulder and looking with him to the walls.

There was something there, he could tell. All along these walls, there was something just out of view. Maybe, if he took off his helmet he could see them better.

“We’ll stop here tonight,” General Fisto calls from the next room.

Jesse nods and Dogma follows him and the others. The room is wide open, unlike the last few they’d been through, and one of the walls is old transperisteel holding back the lake they’d seen this morning when Fisto brought them here.

He’d needed backup to search this place for some relic, with his own men off helping the 104th with an ocean planet. Originally, the 501st and 212th were going to Umbara while their generals were off on a mission, but, with all the mix and matches, General Yoda was taking parts of the Coruscant Guard to back up General Krell.

The planet apparently used to be a Nautolan colony long ago, before a climate event, and the Temple had been a central part of the government. While it hadn’t been a Jedi temple, it had connections with the Old Republic Jedi.

They set up tents, Dogma ending up stuck with Jesse and Kix. Knowing those two, he could have done without it. At least Kix was cognizant of the embarrassment Jesse caused him. Tup, meanwhile, get dragged in with Domino.

Okay, he acknowledged he could do worse than his direct boss and the medic no matter what kind of relationship they had.

Once the tents are up and Jesse and Kix went off to talk to Captain Rex, Dogma took off his helmet and glanced around the room. The walls that weren’t transperisteel weren’t that interesting, just some waves and fish, but he saw slight deviations in the transperisteel that don’t match up with those things.

They looked more like Nautolans.

He stepped closer, around some vode, to reach out and touch them.

“This deep is interesting, is it not?” General Fisto asked, coming up behind him.

Dogma nodded, distant, as he traced the line of an eye.

Fisto quirked his head, reflected in the empty blue and the transperisteel. “What is it?”

Dogma paused, looking back at the General. Of course, he realized, the General couldn’t see them. Not like this. Ta’ak Rei had taught him as much—the Jedi’s Force was something different. As much as he tried to push those thoughts away, this was one of the places he couldn’t.

Dogma held up a finger, then turned back to the lines. It’s chilly in here, just noticeable on the edges of his blacks. He leant closer and breathed on the lines, fogging up the transperisteel.

Fisto sucked in a breath, gills fluttering from the movement. “This is… These were carved!”

Dogma nodded and stepped back.

Fisto laughed, joyous. “Good job, Trooper! Dogma, was it? This is fantastic! I wonder if there’s an easier way to see them…” He reached out to trace some of the lines, picking up the pattern.

Dogma flinched. It was barely a flinch, really, but Nautolans were predatory. Fisto noticed.

“It’s history,” the General said with gentle reverence, somehow picking up that it was how he had reacted to the carvings that bothered him. “And it might just explain where we need to go.”

Dogma nodded, paused. If the General ordered him, he’d do it. Or, he could offer. These kinds of things didn’t deserve to be forgotten—maybe they could take it back to the Temple and put it in the Archives. “I could, ah. I could draw it, sir? I can see it pretty well. It’s just harder because it’s on the transperisteel. The ones on the other walls are clearer, but they’re just waves and fish. This is the important wall.”

Fisto turned to him. “The important wall?”

He could have explained his reasoning, how the light from above would change based on tide and whatever used to live in the dead lake. How it might have cast figures into the room. That felt too much like giving up a part of himself, though.

Jango had said to protect those parts, with panic in his eyes that was usually reserved for Boba. He had warned that a clone knowing those kinds of things, the knowing-not-knowing things, could mean death.

So instead, Dogma said, “Because it has your people on it.”

Fisto stared at him a little longer before nodding. “I’d be indebted to you, Dogma. Please let me know when you’re done.” The General appropriated some flimsiplast and a stylus, then vanished to speak to Captain Rex.

When Dogma turned back to the transperisteel to sketch what the lines were, he jolted. There was a woman, lekku streaming long in the water. Instead of Fisto’s black eyes, or the dark maroon Dogma had seen in a few other Nautolans, her eyes where painfully bright white.

When she noticed his eyes on her, instead of on the carvings, she jolted back too. _Ossik_ , he attracted notice. She swam closer, right through the transperisteel. “Oh, a little Priest. What are you doing here?”

Mutely, he held up the flimsiplast and nodded to the images.

She trilled, swimming through the air around him. “A Priest, here in my Temple, taking down my words! I never thought I’d see the day again. Not on this world, not in this Temple, certainly not.”

His first instinct was to speak up, to ask for her assistance. He couldn’t—with everyone around. Instead he reached out with his mind like Jango and Ta’ak Rei had taught him and Boba.

She giggled, reaching out with sharp nails to wrap her fingers around his face. “Oh yes, I’ll help you Priest. It will only hurt a little bit, you warm child.”

She poured into him, filling his lungs like he was drowning in air. With her starry instruction, he coated the flimsiplast with images—from this room, from other rooms, from her mind that had been alone without a Priest to listen. Most of the last were observations of the world they were on, of the return of algae to some warmer ponds, of the seasons shifting, of the stars moving.

He smiled inwardly, his soul dancing in her waves and her ice with the joy of a dead world finding life again. Finally, she was done. They were out of flimsiplast.

She poured right back out of him, back into the lake without a goodbye or thank you. She didn’t need to give them, he knew.

He came back to Kix’s hand on his shoulder.

“Dogma, you’ve been at this for over an hour. You need to eat--.” The medic paused, eyes wide with horror. “Dogma?”

He blinked back at the older clone, opened his mouth to try and say something back. His lips come apart slowly, numb with cold.

“Dogma! How did you even…” Kix turned back. “Jesse, get the emergency blanket. Someone warm some water.”

General Fisto and Captain Rex both came up, peeling the flimsiplast and the stylus from him, making him sit while Kix stuck a towel in the warmed water and blotted his face with it.

“Should we pull everyone away from the window?” the Captain asked. “If just an hour in front of it gave him hypothermia…”

He wanted to protest—the Goddess from the lake had told him it would hurt and he’s different than everyone else. But different wasn’t good, different was dangerous, so he stayed silent.

“It might be best,” General Fisto agreed. “When we move on tomorrow, some of you should go ahead and go back to the ship. He should not be stuck down here much longer, and from what I can tell from the images he took down we’ll only be a few hours behind.”

Rex hummed, close to Dogma’s ear, and reached out to look at the flimsiplast. “I’ll pull some people together. What do you think Kix?”

Kix frowned, dabbing more warmth onto Dogma’s face. He’d switched to dry cloth, after a few moments and ice that had found itself onto Dogma’s lashes and eyebrows was melted. Now, he shoved shig at him and continued to change out warm blankets. He glanced over at the two COs. “Do you think it would be safe to just take Gloss and Hour? I’d like to take Dogma back myself and get everything set up for the inevitable banthashit.”

Dogma snickered quietly. Kix had completely reasonable reactions to Torrent Company’s bad luck.

Kix tapped the back of his hand—chastisement. It was something he’d picked up from Gaht, the baar’ur that Jango picked to teach the medics. Kix had definitely gotten the old baar’ur’s bedside manner.

Minus the burnt sugar treats. Probably.

“I believe it will be fine,” Fisto assured him. “I have a good feeling about this. Dogma has given us a blessing.”

That nearly made him break down, into laughter or tears he wasn’t sure. As it was, he just vibrated like a tooka against Kix’s hands.

“You shouldn’t have taken such a risk, though. You should pay more attention to what your body says,” the General scolded him.

He ducked his head. He let them think it was him hyperfocusing. Either way, he wouldn’t have noticed. For the first time in so long his soul had been vibrant in dance with a god.

“He good to move to the tent?” Jesse grumbled from behind them.

“Yeah, but you should support him,” Kix said, standing up to help Dogma up and into Jesse’s arms.

Jesse tucked him under an arm and hustled him off. “Gave us a scare, ad’ika,” he murmured as he helped Dogma into the tent. “Kix turned you around and your lips were just blue.”

“N’eparavu takisit,” he mumbled, letting his squad leader bully him onto a bedroll and under blankets.

“Uh huh,” Jesse said. “…That won’t happen to anyone else, will it?” he asked. “That was you. All you.”

Dogma tucked his head down, groaning. Jesse’d always been right on the edge, he’d swear. He was smart enough, he might trick the Gods one day. Or maybe when he was little, he’d tricked them into letting him go. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he grossed.

Jesse settled down next to him. “Are you snappy because the hypothermia or because something happened?”

He peaked out of his blankets. “They take,” he admitted. When Jesse doesn’t reply, he continued. “That’s just their thing. They take and they take and they take…until there’s nothing left of you but what is truly you and the spaces for them.”

Jesse sucked in a sharp breath. “Dogma.”

“It’s nice,” he admitted. “It’s nice to not think of yourself as what people have convinced you that you are. You know I didn’t always want to be called Dogma? Some of my batch started calling me that. Heard a trainer call me dogmatic and…started teasing. I don’t mind it, I like it way more than I was probably meant to, but…”

Jesse was staring, wide-eyed, when he looked up at him. “What did you want to be called?”

He shrugged and turns over, determinedly burrowing back into his blankets. Boba probably still called him by it; Jango, Ta’ak Rei, and Ihaya Ma certainly did. To everyone in Torrent, to everyone off of Kamino who knew him, he was Dogma. The one who knew all of the rules.

He was drowsing when Kix came back into the tent.

“How’s he doing?” the medic asked Jesse.

Jesse was quiet for a beat, then he sighed. “Do you ever feel like we’ve done wrong by some of the vod’ike?”

“What happened?”

Another beat, then Jesse clicked his teeth. “What would you have named him?”

Another silence, longer then. Kix hummed. “I don’t know. Maybe… Something clever? He’s smart, but for all he knows the regs it doesn’t seem quite like that. He’s got teeth, even if he hasn’t started showing them just yet.” Kix, too, had blood that sang loudly. Not as loud as Dogma, or Boba, or the Kamino Priests, and certainly not as loud as Jango. But it was loud.

Dogma felt the corners of his lips tick up.

“Did he say something about his name?” Kix added. Dogma didn’t hear a reply, he’d already fallen asleep.

***

The next morning, Dogma hiked back to the ship with Kix and a few others, feeling stronger than he had in a long time. Even through his bucket, he could see the images that had hidden from him the day before. Maybe it was because he knew what they were, from when the Goddess used his hands. That didn’t account for the color, though.

Once they were out, passing the lake edge, was when it all came crashing through him.

The figure was one no one else could see: golden brown beskar, brown robes like a jetii, erin green gems that nearly glowed, orange markings over the robes, a helmet that had frilled, deadly metal from the visor and that peaked above the crown.

Hod Ha’ran turned toward him, axe in hand, and head tilted like a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> ashfa;nhg Okay so it _would_ take something deeply spiritual, weirdly mythological, and relatively short to get me to post any of my Star Wars fanfiction. I have other things, but they long.
> 
> I don't technically have plans for this series, really, but it's the sandbox I'm currently hanging out in. Using Project0506's Soft Wars as a jumping off because I like Domino Squad and there's some A+ character interactions. I love it very much. There are some things I'm going to stick to on that (look, Rex/Bacara is a gods-tier ship) but some I'm going to lean away from because I don't think I'm going to be doing the whole broad timeline of Soft Wars. Who knows, though. 
> 
> Also plenty of inspiration from MercySewerPyro's A Thousand Painted Teeth series because that's some A+ worldbuilding and mythos and even though I'm not taking directly from that AU, and I already have a thing for creating mythos and shoving that in places it wasn't before, it is a fantastic cousin to the kind of stuff I have percolating. 
> 
> A couple notes -- I have Dogma use the less extreme Mando'a apology (my boy is NOT grovelling for something he isn't actually sorry about, he doesn't have it in him) and Yoda is 10/10 going to execute Krell. Oh, and the 212th is helping someone else at this time so they aren't on Umbara. Finally, if anyone can get close to what Dogma's original name is, I will write something for you.


End file.
